How-To Guides
Step-by-step guides for every animal, the garden, orchard, pasture and compost: getting started, housing, feeding, daily care, breeding, health and harvest.
Raising Sheep
Sheep are grazers that give meat, wool and sometimes milk. They are calmer than goats and easier to fence, but they need a flock and careful parasite control.
- Pregnancy
- about 147 days
- Flock size
- 3 or more
- Shear
- once a year
- One ram for
- 30–50 ewes
1Getting started
- Meat: Katahdin and Dorper (hair sheep, no shearing). Wool: Merino, Romney, Corriedale. Dual: Suffolk, Hampshire.
- Start with at least three ewes; sheep panic alone.
- Buy from a flock with good parasite resistance records.
2Housing and fencing
- A three-sided shed with about 15 sq ft each is enough in most climates.
- Woven wire or electric netting about 4 ft; guard dogs or donkeys help against coyotes.
- Lambing jugs about 5 × 5 ft for each ewe for the first days after birth.
3Feeding
- Good pasture and hay are most of the diet; grain only late in pregnancy and for nursing ewes.
- Copper is poisonous to sheep: use sheep minerals only, never goat, cattle or horse minerals or feed.
- Rotate pasture — move sheep before they graze below 3–4 in.
4Breeding and lambing
- Most breeds breed in fall for spring lambs.
- Have a lambing kit ready: gloves, lube, iodine for navels, towels and a bottle of colostrum.
- Lambs should be up and nursing within an hour or two.
5Health and wool
- Check eyelids (FAMACHA) for barber pole worm and deworm only those that need it.
- CD&T yearly, with ewes boosted a month before lambing.
- Trim hooves and watch for foot rot (a limping sheep with a bad smell between the toes).
- Shear wool breeds in spring before the heat, and crutch (trim around the tail) before lambing.
Space guide
For each animalFencing: Woven wire or electric netting, about 4 ft
- Lambing jug about 5 × 5 ft per ewe
- Rotate pasture to break parasite cycles
Rules of thumb — more room is always better, and breed, climate and local rules can change what you need. Sketch it out in the Barn & Garden Planner.
Put it to work
These free tools keep the records for you once you’ve made an account:
These are rules of thumb from university extension guidance. Breed, climate and your state’s rules change the details — your county extension office is the best place to ask, and you can find it on the selling rules page by ZIP code.